And while there's no instruction manual on how to navigate a situation like the one we are in, his declaration that the state may need to spend a further 12 months under the labours of a state of emergency was poorly articulated and badly delivered.

It should come as no surprise to any of us that masks and social distancing will be part and parcel of life for a long while yet.

But Mr Andrews' inability to deliver that message crisply and succinctly saw a host of opponents immediately fly off the handle, their hysteria only adding more fuel to the fire and creating further uncertainty.

By the time we got to some of the particulars yesterday about what the next stage of restrictions might look like, the damage was done. It's difficult to know what opponents of the proposed extension to the state of emergency expect things to be like within another month or so, but the reality is we cannot afford too much to change.

Former Bank of Victoria building in Bendigo is for sale

We are currently stuck between a rock and a hard place when it comes to restrictions. Not enough has changed - yet, for things to change too much, yet we crave some of the freedoms that might eventuate if things do change.

Those freedoms are also the biggest threat to our ongoing and long term health and wellbeing.

It's worth noting that New Zealand went months without a single case of COVID-19 before the sudden re-emergence of the virus earlier this month that saw restrictions introduced once more.

There's no doubt Victorians are fatigued by lockdown, and that psychologically this event is extracting its own toll.

And at the end of all this, we should remember that as of late yesterday, 517 Australian lives had been lost to COVID-19, 430 of them here in Victoria.

That's still 517 lives too many, but it's less than 0.06 per cent of the approximately 813,000 lives lost around the world to COVID-19 so far.